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Tomorrow I’m going back to my high school to teach incoming freshmen how to march for the fall marching band season. I spoke to my old band director today, and he needs someone to come in and help for a couple of days. I’m also getting paid, which is really nice. To tell the truth, I would have been happy to help even without pay, but I do need a job. It’s only going to be a two day job, because the rest of the summer is break time, but come August, I may be back on the field, helping out.

It was great to see AB (my old band director). I hadn’t seen him in six years and it was good to catch up. Even though I lived here continuously for 4 years after graduation, I never went to visit because I got the impression that he didn’t like me. I wasn’t the most dedicated student, although I did play a variety of instruments in high school, and I always felt like he disliked me for being lazy. I guess six years makes a difference. It felt good to be back in the band building and in his office. He still has the same movie poster that was there 10 years ago.

I remember him being a very young, very passionate, and very strict director when he came to my school. I was a sophomore, sixteen years old, and he was twenty three. Amazing how young he was, considering. I’m about to turn twenty five, and he will be thirty three this year. He has two kids now, and his son is turning five. That’s kind of amazing.

I think he’s a bit more relaxed now, although I know that tomorrow I’ll see the old AB, terse and yelling. I remember when we used to have band practice at 7am out on the field in the fall, and there would be ice on the turf. Now they have astroturf. I wonder if astroturf gets iced over in the morning. Anyway, we would come out on the field with our instruments and our music (if we were still at the stage where we hadn’t memorized it), and we’d run through the drill (basically a map of positions) for two hours every day. He’d be sitting up in the stands, looking at the formations, and shouting through a megaphone. Good times.

Tomorrow should be fun. Start at 1pm, finish around 5 or 6 or maybe 7. I’m going to need a lot of sunblock, but this is also my chance to get a tan. Speaking of necessesities, I need sneakers. Can’t march in construction-style shoes.